


Count your chickens

by thaumatomane (choosedailymail)



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Injury, Injury Recovery, M/M, Multiple Orgasms, actual chickens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 15:26:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4611876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choosedailymail/pseuds/thaumatomane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Major Grant is gravely injured during a spot of espionage. Strange tries to help using magic, with accidentally sexy consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Count your chickens

Strange had no idea what time it was, but then time meant nothing when at war. A soldier was required to be prepared day and night. Strange on the other hand was a magician. The luxury of sleeping when the sun went down and waking when it rose once more, was very much his alone. Major Grant and Colonel De Lancey had been away from the camp on a reconnaissance detail for the last two days and nights. They were due to report the movements of the French to Wellington this coming morning. Strange thought it was perhaps their horses which had woken him, with their clinking bits and impatient hooves stamping into the grass. He only realised for certain what had woken him when he heard it for a second time.

It was most certainly Major Grant, the timbre of his voice recognisable even in the bleary haze of half-sleep. The cry he gave out was harrowing. It was the kind of wretched sound Strange imagined a man might make as his skin was torn from him strip by strip. He refused to rise from his bed and peek through the flap of his tent, as he was sure others would be doing. To watch a man experience such agony when he could do nothing to help would be an invasion of privacy. He knew Grant loathed to show weakness. Grant was a soldier through and through and would fight to keep up this death-defying image until his final breath. Strange could not help but hear him though. He could not simply close up his ears.

Voices began to chatter and the glow of lanterns flashed beside Strange’s tent, shadows bouncing and dancing upon the material as his neighbours rushed to Grant’s aid. Strange felt a little guilty for not responding himself. Grant disliked him (and continued to use that blasted ‘Merlin’ nickname) and so Strange disliked his dislike. He did not have to prove himself to Grant. Neither did he feel he particularly had to prove himself to Wellington. He just had to make sure he got out of this damned war alive. From the screams Grant was making currently, it did not seem he would be so lucky.

Bending his pillow over his ears Strange tried to block out the sounds. If Grant was still alive in the morning he would see what he could do, if indeed there was anything, to help.

*

“With Grant out of the picture I require your skills instead,” Wellington snapped his fingers in front of Strange’s face to rouse him from his vacant state. “Merlin!”

“Sorry my Lord,” Strange blinked himself back to the matter in hand. Before him on the table laid a large map of the surrounding land. De Lancey was busy placing small black markers upon it. The Colonel's intelligence had been acquired, but at a price. “May I ask as to the fate of Major Grant?” De Lancey looked up at Strange briefly from the corner of his eye before turning his attention back to the map. He looked wounded, but in a different way. Strange would never know it, but De Lancey had put himself in danger by getting much too close to the French. He then suffered an impromptu sneezing fit. Coming to his rescue, Grant had been the one to bear the consequences.

“His fate does not concern me,” Wellington said sharply, “what concerns me is that we're becoming surrounded. I need you to move this battalion,” he grabbed one of the black markers from the map and placed it behind another, “here. Then, they will be advancing on their own men. That should bide us some time.” Strange nodded sheepishly. Wellington patted Strange firmly on the shoulder and left, for he had not yet had his breakfast. He had however tricked an entire French battalion into inactivity, and before breakfast! 

“What _is_ his fate?” Strange asked the Colonel, now it was just the two of them.

“Unknown." De Lancey spoke to the pages he was writing on, noting down all that had been discussed that morning along with Wellington’s new plans for the magician. “If he recovers it will take a long while.” His pen paused on the paper as he considered Grant's situation.

“Where is he?”

“In his tent. He refused to be put with the other casualties,” he resumed his writing, “there’s not much that can be done for him anyway.”

“He was shot?”

“No,” De Lancey paused again, staring through the ink as it blotted against the page, “that would have been easier.” He raised his hand to his chest, touching just beneath his collarbone. “Speared here, all the way through and out the other side.”

Strange looked suddenly pale. He nodded and left the tent to get on with his work.

*

Jeremy had been sitting beside his master for a while, poking lazily at the eggs as they boiled away over their small campfire. A week or so prior Strange had cast a fertility spell upon the camp’s two remaining chickens. The men were now laden with eggs and at least fifty tiny, yellow-feathered chicks were running about. Strange enjoyed watching the men play with them and found it rather endearing. These soldiers, paid to kill and maim, dressed in the uniform of war, became tender young boys at the sight of a baby chicken. One of them had just plodded beside Jeremy, peeping in a high pitch as it tried to find its mother, but he had been too focused on the pan of water to notice it.

Strange glanced over at Grant’s tent. It was quite a way from his own, but he could see it all the same. Every now and then a medic would enter, then leave pretty soon after. His tent seemed to have an aura of silence around it. The soldiers all knew Grant was going to die, they just weren’t vocalising it. It brought a sombre hush to the camp that was unusual.

This morning Strange had moved the requested Battalion in a mere minute. Wellington now had other business he was attending to. There really was nothing to do but sit and fret over what agonies Grant must be in presently. Peering at the books piled up behind Jeremy’s back, Strange reached for one at random. There had to be something he could distract himself with.

After Strange had been reading for a while Jeremy jumped at his exclamation, almost dropping the egg he was shelling.

“Jeremy!” Strange peered at him wildly over the top of his book, his eyes alive with excitement.

“Yes Sir?”

“Catch me a chick!”

*

It had taken Strange a while to become accustomed to the absence of knocking that came with tents. One had to clear one’s throat outside, or shout the name of its inhabitant to request entry. Almost everyone thought Strange odd for doing so, as bursting into another’s tent completely unannounced was a norm to any solider (if they were of the same rank of course.) However, with Grant so incapacitated, Strange thought it best to take the soldierly approach and just walk in.

“Major Grant?”

Strange swallowed at the sight of him. Grant had a sheen of sweat over his face and his skin was pale and mottled like curdling milk. His lips were a grey colour, as were the back of his eyelids. He could not see the wound, as a thin cotton sheet was covering him on the raised bed. The sheet was bloodstained.

“What?” It was mouthed more than said, and Grant did not open his eyes to greet Strange.

“You are unwell.” Strange cursed himself. He had no idea how to talk to people who were injured, nor to offer comfort. All he had managed so far was to state the obvious. Looking skyward he attempted to conjure some more appropriate words. Grant opened his eyes a crack and gave him the strongest glare he could muster. “You are injured, not unwell.” Grant continued to look at him. He better be going somewhere with this, he had just finally been drifting off to sleep when Strange had rudely interrupted him. “Magic cannot halt or reverse the advancement of an illness, but I believe it can heal a wound such as this one.”

Grant did not immediately think of himself. He thought of all the men he had seen die from their injuries. If Strange was saying he could have prevented these deaths, he would wring his neck the moment he had the strength to do so.

“One requires an injury that is uninfected, and not involving any vital organs.” With these words, he slowly peeled back the bloodied blanket from Grant’s chest. Grant was heavily bandaged, the white cloth changed recently but already sodden with a dark scarlet. He was undressed from the waist up, every inch of him perspiring. “I took the liberty of inquiring, and you are not yet infected. Your wound is clean.” He smiled, then quickly regained his composure. He cleared his throat before continuing. “It also requires a living host to receive the injury as a substitute.” Ah, Grant thought. That was why this magic had never been mentioned before. “I believe I have one.” Bending down Strange lifted a small wood box from the floor by its handle, high enough for Grant to see it without turning his head. He heard a chirping sound from inside. “It is a chick,” Strange said.

“Have you…” Grant went to speak but found himself wincing instead, the action of moving his lips pulled on tendons that were severely ruptured. He panted softly, his breathing another kind of agony. Strange waited patiently for him to recover himself, the box back on the floor and his hands crossed at the small of his back. “Have you done this before?”

Strange shook his head. Somehow, answering in the negative had him smiling delightedly. He seemed excited to try some new magic.

“You would be my first,” he searched for the word, “test subject.”

If Grant had any strength to, he would have laughed. Strange was not so good at convincing people. But really, what did he have to lose?

“Very well.”

“Good!” Strange bent down and retrieved his book from beside the box. Opening it at the page he had marked and propping it against Grant’s thigh he began to read, skimming over the introductory paragraphs to the annotated incantation. (Written at the end in Norrell’s frantic scrawl was the word ‘caution’, which had been crossed out, the word “no!” written in capitals beside it.) “I’m afraid I require the wound to be uncovered.” Grant eyed the table beside him. Upon it were fresh rolls of bandages, scissors and various medical looking objects Strange thought best to ignore. Cutting through the layers of cloth where they were least bloody, he began to slowly and carefully peel them back.

Grant let out a small sob as the sodden bandages were pulled from his skin. The blood had sealed them to the wound, which was not a straight cut as Strange had expected, rather a jagged zig zag of torn flesh. Gritting his teeth Grant shut his eyes tight, tears stinging their corners. He hated Strange seeing him so helpless, but if he could help him he deemed it worth it.

“I apologise,” Strange said, eyes wide as he stared at the gash, a little haunted by it. He wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand after throwing the bandages onto the grass. He could not begin to imagine what the wound must have felt like. There was a white flash of bone visible beneath the skin and it made Strange’s stomach turn. Apparently a wound like this was impossible to stitch, as whatever foreign bodies might be inside would become trapped and quickly go bad. Grant's best chance of survival was letting it heal from the inside out.

Grant was shuddering now, the mere air against his skin like hundreds of tiny blades slicing at him. Turning back to the book, Strange continued.

“Now. I must touch it.”

“N--,” it was a strangled noise, desperate and terrified. Surely Strange did not _have_ to touch it? But then he was, his cold fingers pressing softly against the fissure of his shoulder. Grant shuddered, frozen in distress at the pain of it. It hurt. It hurt so much he could feel darkness creeping into the edges of his vision, bile rising in his throat. Would he pass out or vomit  first? He did not know.

Looking up, Grant saw Strange’s face rapt in the act of magic. Under his breath he whispered softly, eyes fixed on his own hand upon Grant’s skin. Delirious with pain, Grant hallucinated a ghostly hand rising out from his chest. It grabbed at Strange’s throat and strangled him. Then there was another, slapping him over and over, hard enough to knock out his teeth. Grant wanted the hands to snap Strange's neck, pull out clumps of his hair, anything to stop the pain. A wicked voice from deep inside Grant told him to kill the magician, _save yourself and kill him._ His shoulder was burning as though it had been set on fire, his skin throbbing with the quick beat of his heart. It was too much. Too much...

Suddenly, like a bubble bursting and vanishing into thin air, the pain was gone. Grant came back to himself as though he had been punched conscious by a fist. Still panting furiously from the now absent pain, he realised he could feel nothing, or rather, nothing where something had just been. Above him, Strange’s hand was clawed, lifting upward as though dragging an invisible object out of him. Then, curling his fingers into his palm and pointing a finger, he directed the unseen force toward the box at his feet. There was an almighty crash of sound and a flash of light. Horses whinnied in the distance. The box had disintegrated, a small smoking crater left where it once stood, and the tent was filled with fluttering yellow feathers that were singed at the edges, the odd one on fire as it fell. As the feathers settled onto the surfaces around them, Strange’s shoulders slumped slack, his hands falling limp at his sides.

Grant’s wound was healed, unscarred. The only sign that there had been an injury at all was the dried blood on his chest. It was over.

It was _supposed_ to be over.

After a moment of shocked silence, Grant's chest suddenly heaved. His body shot upright, then collapsed backward, his hips arching upward and fists tightly locking upon the bed frame.

“Oh God!” he gasped. In his panic, Strange knocked the book onto the floor and scrambled to pick it up again.

“Pain?” he asked, franticly flicking through the pages, “are you in pain!” Grant could not answer, for his body was racked with visible tremors and whimpers that Strange could make no sense of. Grant's eyes were screwed closed and his teeth gritted as he let out a long agonised sound.

Strange hurriedly read through the first passage of the spell's chapter, one he had perhaps foolishly skimmed earlier.

“Ah!” he said loudly, as he needed to speak at a higher volume to Grant’s noises, “it appears that the substitute should have been of roughly the same build as the injured party. Otherwise,” he turned the page, “there may be adverse effects.”

“You say that now!” Grant stammered, groaning. Strange continued to read aloud, perspiring under the pressure of the situation, his hair falling into his eyes.

“These effects may include an opposing sensation of--” he continued to read in his head as Grant gasped and shuddered on the bed. As he read he quietly mouthed the words (along with Norrell’s notations to help make sense of it all) to himself. “Good Lord, Major Grant, it would seem that you are experiencing the full physical force of your injury again, only with the sensation reversed.” Lowering the book, he looked down at Grant, cheeks flushing red at the realisation of what was happening. In the small hours of this morning he had covered his ears to avoid the awkwardness of hearing Grant crying in pain. He had not expected that before lunchtime he would witness him clawing at himself in ecstasy.

“How do you stop it?” Grant shouted. The pleasure was so intense that it was ironically painful, sending his limbs into cramps and flashing stars into his vision. His throat was dry from gasping, head spinning like he’d had too much gin. Also. he'd never felt more humiliated in his life.

“I would presume,” Strange said awkwardly, peering down at the splintered remains of the chick’s final home, “until the energies level out.” Grant looked at him wildly. “That is to say, the chick could only take the smallest amount of your pain before it died,” (a pang of guilt shot through his chest at this thought), “so there will be a surplus that requires… exhausting.” He nodded and went to leave, but Grant grabbed his arm with a fierce grip.

“You’re not going anywhere.” As Grant sat up, Strange’s attention was caught by the sheet at his lap, which had fallen away from him. Grant had a remarkable cockstand beneath his smallclothes. The fabric at his crotch was soaking and for a brief moment Strange thought Grant may have wet himself during the magic. He had certainly been in a lot of pain, he would not have judged him for it. Almost as quickly as he had thought of this he realised what in fact the stain was, and swallowed. “How many more must I endure?” Grant hissed and clutched at his clothed prick with his free hand. He had spent once, then twice, then a third time with no respite and barely any moment to breathe between them. His prick shuddered in his hand as he spent a fourth time, screeching through it before falling backlimply against the bed again, his head rolling from side to side. Pulling Grant’s stiff clawed hand from his arm Strange placed it back onto the bed. Grant was groaning, just as he had been this morning only more furiously. Strange wondered if anyone within earshot thought he might be being murdered in here.

“I cannot say how long this will last,” Strange said, “but I do hope you’re grateful for it. Surely this is a better state to be in than before?” Grant gulped with a dry mouth, trying to regain at least a little composure. What Strange said was true, but it did not help him right now.

“Water. I need water.”

“Yes.” Strange rushed to the decanter at the foot of the bed. Blowing a charred yellow feather from the bottom of the glass, he filled it. “Here.” He soon realised that Grant had no strength to grip, so brought the rim to his lips and poured some into his mouth for him.

“God help me!” Grant spluttered. Every movement of his skin felt like magnified bliss. Where his smallclothes touched his thighs he could feel a small fire burning away. His own hair against his forehead was like a wet tongue laving at his skin. He could feel the very air around him shaping into hands that caressed and brushed over his chest and nipples. Under his prickled flesh was a never-ending throb, throb, throb of mounting pleasure. When Strange touched his arm to comfort him, Grant moaned in response as though he was being pierced with teeth, or fucked into a mattress. “Please make it stop Merlin, please!” He spent a fifth time, soiled and soaked in his own seed.

“There might be something…” Strange mumbled, seeing no end to this any time soon if he did not intervene.

“Then do it man!”

Strange knew of a spell that could cause experiences to be shared. It was dangerous, as it could sometimes meld together thoughts or memories (or both) of the two participants, and naturally Norrell had instructed him never to attempt it under any circumstances. Strange had memorised it though, for he wondered if he might use it with Arabella. It would not be so bad to share her memories, her thoughts; they were husband and wife after all. He had abandoned the idea when he realised that she might know his thoughts, see into his memory. He would not have her look that deeply into his soul.

There was no time to worry about the side effects now, not when Grant was threatening to break his arm off as he clutched at him again.

“Very well.”

He whispered under his breath, speaking the words of the spell the way he remembered them and adding certain flourishes of his own: ‘experience’ he replaced with ‘sensation’, for example. Placing his hand to Grant’s chest, he felt his torment seep into him like a heat, drawing half of the relentless power into his body (along with much of the embarrassment).

As Strange hunched forward, Grant let out a sigh of relief. The pleasure was still there, but it was a bearable amount. It did not feel like countless orgasms coiled into one dazzling blow to the very core of him. It was, manageable. He felt Strange’s forehead press against his chest, the tickle of his hair on his skin, and it was not too much to bear. Then there was the heat of his breath and the sound of his immediate reaction.

“Good grief,” Strange stammered, clutching at Grant as though he were an inanimate object impervious to pain. Grant’s hand came up to grip the back of his head, holding him there and forcing him to ride it out the way he had been made to. Strange was always so composed, so polite and proper. But that image would be forever shattered for Grant, as he could now hear him cursing into his naked chest and clutching at his bicep with the strength of a vice. “Is it, can it be so fast?” Grant did not understand until he felt Strange’s body jerk with completion, shuddering through it and bucking his hips into the side of the bed. He made the most delightful noises as he spent, Grant thought. Thanks to the odd effects of the spell, Strange knew he thought this. Grant knew he knew too.

Inhibitions lost, Grant allowed himself to enjoy the sound and sight of Mr Strange collapsed over him, crumbling into a pile of limbs and mussed hair across his front. Eventually, Strange slid down onto the floor, grabbing at the grass to steady himself as he spent a second time, panting through it. 

They shared the aftershocks of it until the energy was used up and all that was left were two men, gasping for air and as embarrassed as they had ever been.

As Strange came back to himself, he looked at the wood shards in the hole beside him. There was a small orange claw atop the pile, barely the size of his smallest fingernail. He slid it into his pocket. Later, he would bury it at the edge of the field, make a small cross from grasses. The chick’s sacrifice would be appreciated. Grant’s voice broke him from his planning.

“You have done a very good job on my arm,” he said with surprise. He stroked his fingers over the skin as he looked at it, completely healed as though nothing had happened. It was as though time had reversed and the sword had never pierced him, and De Lancey had never sneezed.

“You’re welcome,” Strange said from the floor. He thought he might manage to stand now. As he did, he turned and looked at Grant. The sweat of his ordeal had diluted most of the blood, but a few red bruises still remained upon his arm. Strange pointed at them, numbly realising that he could feel a similar pain on his own arm as the sharing spell wore off. “I apologise for missing those.” Grant smirked.

“They happened after you healed me.” Strange realised almost immediately that they were from his own hand, clutching at Grant as he rode out the pleasure with him. There was a pause between them as they remembered it. “Well, I shall need to get back to Wellington,” Grant mumbled, pulling his sheet up over himself and laying back, “and to De Lancey, to give him a thick ear.” Strange smiled loosely, holding his book strategically lower than usual to conceal his own stained breeches. Grant would need some time to recover from his ordeal, and it looked as though he might already be drifting off to sleep to do so, but he was back to normal. That was all Strange had wanted.

“Good,” he nodded, “then all is as it should be.”

When Strange left the tent, the crowd that had gathered around it to listen quickly dispersed. Strange stood, mortified, as the soldiers cleared their throats and acted like they were busy with and engrossed in something else. Cleaning their muskets perhaps, or just kicking at the ground with their feet. Only Winespill remained as he had been.

“Is Major Grant well?” he asked, a wide smile on his wide face, “and yourself Sir?”

Strange nodded.

“Yes. We are both quite well.”

“Very good Sir! You have performed a miracle here today.” Winespill looked innocently pleased. There was a faint crackle of laughter from nearby.

Strange strode back to his tent, eyes fixed on his destination.

He hoped to God this would not be mentioned in dispatches.


End file.
